Seven Months

We approach only as far as the police tape allows.

"You'll have to wait here with us, just until we know what's going on."

On the screen in front of us, the special instructions fill us in on the latest details as they emerge. Caller states his girlfriend has a gun and is threatening to kill herself. The call is from a mobile phone, the mobile mast locating it two hundred miles from the address we've been given. Instead of playing Chinese whispers, I ask for the mobile number and hand it to one of the police officers. In a swift flip of his radio, he unbuckles it from his bullet-proof vest and with the radio on loud speaker dials the number.

There's no answer the first time and the call rings straight through to the answer phone.

"Hello, you've reached Michael's phone. Please leave a message after the tone, and if I remember, I'll call you back some time."

The officer doesn't leave a message, but tries to call again only a minute later. This time, a sleepy voice answers.

"Hello?"

"Hello Michael. This is PC Ryan from the Met Police. You called to tell us about your girlfriend?"

"Yeah. Natalie! She's at home, she phoned to say she had a gun and she was going to kill herself."

"Has she ever owned a gun?"

"Never. She probably doesn't even know how to use it."

In the distance, we can see other officers dressing as if for battle. Full body armour, helmets, gloves and semi-automatic weapons at the ready give an impression more of a unit preparing for war than a group of people attempting to save a life.

"Has she ever threatened suicide before?"

"Loads of times. She's taken tablets, slashed her wrists, all sorts, but never anything like this!"

"What's her name again?"

"Natalie."

Seconds later, a negotiator calls through a megaphone.

"Natalie - this is the police. Open the door." For some time, nothing happens. No lights are switched on, no curtains move, no doors open. He calls for a second time, but this time, as soon as he calls her name, light suddenly appears through a tiny gap in the curtain of a first floor window.

The face that eventually appears looks confused, perhaps even scared at the sight of a small invading army standing outside the front door. Slowly, reluctantly, she opens a window.

"What's wrong?"

"Put the gun down!" Screams the police team's sergeant.

"Gun? What gun?"

"Put your hands where we can see them!"

Natalie places both her hands very deliberately on the window sill. "I really don't have a gun. What's this all about?"

"Did you tell someone you wanted to hurt yourself tonight?"

Immediately, a note of understanding registers on her face. "You've had a call from Michael, haven't you?"

He puts down the megaphone and the rest of the conversation takes place at a more civilized volume, particularly as it's the middle of the night. Faces appear at various windows and curtains twitch up and down the street.

"We have. He's told us you have a gun and were threatening to kill yourself."

"Wait there. I'm coming to open the door."

Thirty seconds later, Natalie appeared at the front door, adorned in a pair of pink pyjamas for which she apologises.

"It's a hoax. It's the best one he's pulled yet. He can't get over the fact that we split up, seven months ago already."

She goes on to tell the officers about all the other problems he's caused, sending the fire brigade, calling out doctors and mental health teams, even getting the Samaritans to give her a call. Just as a formality, one of the armed response team searched the house and, as expected, found no gun.

"I told you everything was alright. I'm not suicidal, I'm not depressed, I'm just trying to get on with my life." She stared suddenly at the stars, then looked all around her and laughed. "I'll tell you one thing for free; it's been a long seven months." 

The armed response team packed away their kit, other police removed the tape that had cordoned off the street, and we could finally remove the heavy ballistic vests that we'd been asked to wear. As we sit back in the ambulance and watch all the other teams leave, life in the suburban road returns to what should be a normal night, especially in Natalie's life.

Quiet and undisturbed. 

S'pose

"I know you," he says, his knock on the window jolting me out of my nocturnal daydream. "You picked me up when them cops came to my house! S'pose you don't remember." 

"Craig?" 

"Good memory you've got there." 

"What are you doing here at four in the morning?" 

"Oh, you know. This and that. Just hanging around." 

"Outside a hospital?"

"S'pose this is where I live now. Under section, in the nut house round the back. They just let me out for a smoke, but I ran off to get a better spot." 

Craig was dragged away from home a couple of weeks earlier by the police after destroying every piece of furniture in his house and threatening to set fire to the damaged remains. His mother begged us to let him stay at home, claiming it had never happened before, that he was just drunk, and that she'd look after him now. Two facts prevented that from happening. The first was the fact that it was taking the full force of several police officers to restrain him, and the second was the arterial bleed from his arm. 

Craig went back to sitting on the wall where he must have been perched before scaring the life out of me. It was three storeys up from the ground, with nothing between him and the concrete below. 

"You know, I'm pleased you're here. You can be my witness." 

"Witness for what, Craig?" 

"For me jumping off here. You can tell them that I meant it, that I didn't just fall." 

"Jumping? What do you want to do that for?" I sat there, frantically wracking my brain for a way to get some help without alerting him to the idea, but in the meantime I was happy that he just kept talking. 

He took a crumpled cigarette out of his pocket. "I 'spose you don't smoke, do you?"

"Nope. Never have done. Why?"

"Smoked since I was fourteen. Ten years that is. S'pose I knew then already that I wasn't going to have a long life. Twenty a day normally, sometimes thirty, forty. Even had a hundred once in one day, thought it would kill me there and then, but it didn't. Still here, aren't I? Still need my smokes. Still need some fresh air to smoke 'em. Pollute the air with smoke like they tried to pollute my mind. I know what they were doing to me in there!"

"In where, Craig?"

"There! The nut house!"

Craig pulled a lighter out that was tucked into his watch strap, made himself a little more comfortable on the edge of the wall and after a few attempts finally managed to light the cigarette. Two long drags later, he kept talking.

"I'm gonna finish the pack of twenty that I've got, and then that's it. I'm getting out. I've got this one and one more. That's it. No more smokes, no more police, no more hospitals, no more nothing. Glad you're here, anyway. I already told you that, didn't I?"

"You did. But I might be gone in a minute, if I get a call."

"S'pose I'll wait 'til you get back then."

As if on cue, the computer rang and sent me out into the night, heading in the vague direction of a jumbled set of coordinates on a map. Someone had called in from a mobile phone, and before the exact details are confirmed, the system works out which mast the call is routed through, and starts sending me there. The little red triangle on the map showed a point less than a mile away. Now that I finally had the chance, I called up control and let them know about Craig, where he was sitting, and that they need to send someone, anyone, to stop him from carrying out his threat.

A minute or so down the road, the details of the call finally came through.

Location: Nearby Hospital, by the A&E entrance. 


Details: Male, unknown age, threatening to jump off high wall. Ambulance car was on scene, now left. 


By the time I'd turned round and got back to where I started, two members of staff from the Mental Health unit were talking to Craig, as a police officer helped him off the wall. He looks up at me, perhaps confused by my swift return, perhaps amused by it.

"You know what," he says, as a pair of handcuffs are applied, "I'll do it one day, whether you're there, or anyone's there. Or not. S'pose it's back to the nut house. S'pose I'd better get another packet of smokes, though."

Zapped

The alleyway's smell would linger for a long time. It seemed to cling to my uniform, my boots, the ambulance, and in particular, my nostrils. Boxes of discarded food, bags of waste, animal waste, probably human waste too. And in amongst it all stood Larry.

"Come one step nearer, and I'll kill you. Then I'll kill myself!"

The machete in his hand proved the seriousness of his threat. I'd met Larry before, only once, at a nearby bus garage. Just another homeless man in the sea of misery and despair that still shocks me in a first-world city such as ours. Looking twenty years older than the early forties he really was, all he wanted then was somewhere warm and dry to spend the night, and we obliged. Much to the disgust but resigned acceptance of the local hospital. They placed him in the waiting room where he slept the night away, awkwardly perched on one of the wooden seats.

This time was different. He was angry, frustrated by the cards that life had dealt him. He was desparate.

"I just want to end it all. You can't help me, and I don't want you to try!"

I didn't dare open my mouth yet. There was a line of police officers between Larry and us, each carrying a shield and covered in body armour. The absurdity that the only people who regularly carry weapons in this country are the criminals, seemed all the more frightening as we waited for the armed response unit to arrive. One of the officers, taking on the role of negotiator tried to talk to Larry, eliciting nothing more than threats that were becoming more real by the minute. We heard more sirens in the distance, the distinctive sound of the armed unit's cars speeding their way through the streets, and as they arrived, there was a definite change in the atmosphere around us.

We had no idea he was armed until we turned up on scene. All we had was a call to a distressed male threatening passers by. No one bothered to tell us that the threats were more than just verbal, and when we were told that the police were on scene, we expected nothing more than a panda car and a couple of local officers.

The police seemed to have a little more information, but it never reached us, and as we pulled up to see several vehicles and a dozen officers dressed ready for battle, we realised that the call was a little more than the initial disturbance we'd assumed. As he started swinging his arms at the cordon, we finally saw what we were dealing with. The alleyway was a dead end, but humans when frightened and cornered, just like animals, will try to battle their way out. Larry could only see one way out, and he seemed determined enough to take it.

He took one swing with the machete towards the line of officers, more a threatening gesture than a real attempt at causing harm. The entire line shuffled a step backwards and erupted into loud calls to put the knife down. Larry laughed. A manic, full-bodied laugh that turned unexpectedly to tears.

"Go away," he sobbed, "and leave me alone to get on with it! I don't want to hurt anybody. I just want to die!"

Two armed officers had joined the ranks, with several others a row behind, using the shields already present for their protection. The standoff tensed, and the sight of a dozen armoured personnel standing over a lone, tormented soul, protected by nothing more than a t-shirt and frenzied arm-waving, turned almost surreal. Negotiations continued, Larry shouted some of his replies, whispered others, and intermittently threatened to put the knife to its intended use.

We stood there for over an hour, a dozen or so paces behind the front line. Crowds of people had gathered at all the police tapes, trying to catch a voyeuristic glimpse of the drama unfolding on their streets. Dozens of police cars and vans were both inside and on the edges of the cordon, along with a solitary ambulance. The presence of the large yellow box on wheels looked almost symbolic rather than functional in the sea of silvery-blue.

In an instant, the mood changed. A chorus of voices yelled at Larry, and two red laser dots appeared on his chest. Over the top of the line of officers, a glint of steel reflected the blue LED lights from the police cars and seemed to come a little nearer. Larry screamed back, frantically flailing and warning the police to stay back. A combination of stupidity and curiosity made us take a few steps forwards, just in time to hear more warnings in both directions, hear a crackle through the air, and see Larry's torso get hit by two spikes. 

The moment he was hit, Larry let out an almost primeval shriek, his body stiffened, the machete fell one way, and he the other. Seconds later, it was all over. Half a dozen officers were on top of Larry, securing him, ensuring his safety and theirs. The knife was removed and placed in a large plastic tube, and Larry was carried face down onto the back of the ambulance. I'd only had the training two days earlier on how to remove Taser barbs, and was probably inappropriately pleased to get the chance to use the training so soon after.  

Larry was sat up on the trolley bed, restraints in place around his legs, handcuffs holding his wrists behind his back. He was no threat to anyone now, least of all and most importantly to himself. We removed the barbs from his chest, at which he flinched but hardly made a sound. Two officers were stood by the top of the bed, ready to pounce in case he made an unlikely and frankly impossible dash for freedom. Once the barbs had been removed, we lowered the head of the bed down a little, allowing Larry to lay on there a little more comfortably, on his side facing us, easing the pressure off his cuffed hands.

As we took Larry to hospital with what seemed like a battalion of police officers accompanying us, there was an eerie quiet, each of us mulling over everything that had just happened. I was writing notes, the officers were standing guard. Only the noise of the sirens made any impression on the surroundings. Finally, Larry broke the silence, as he turned to one of the officers.

"Are you the guy that zapped me with that thing?"

The reply was gruff, pointed, matter of fact. "Yeah, it was me. What of it?"

He broke down again. "Thank you for saving my life."

And I thought that was our job.